Quake 2 IRIX > 128mb doesn’t seem to matter (much)
Just benchmarked my 180mhz R5000SC cpu with only 128mb of memory in Quake 2, it's marginally worse than when I benchmarked the same CPU, but with 1gb of memory. This makes sense though in that back in 1997 when Quake 2 came out, I think I only had just upgraded to 32mb of ram in my Pentium 200 MMX running Windows NT 4. So all the extra ram wouldn't help this scenario.
The one major caveat I noticed was running in a 320x240 window @ 640x480, my O2 ran out of memory and started paging to the Virtual Memory (thank you gmemusage). I tested it twice to make sure, but a word to the wise, do not run Quake 2 in a window if you only have 128mb of memory. I'll test it out with 192mb shortly.
In case anyone was interested here is an updated list:
320x240
128mb - 180mhz R5000SC - 4.1 / 169.6 seconds
1024mb - 180mhz R5000SC - 14.9 / 46.3 seconds
1024mb - 300mhz R5200SC - 18.8 / 36.7 seconds
640x480
128mb - 180mhz R5000SC - 12.2 / 56.3 seconds
1024mb - 180mhz R5000SC - 12.4fps / 55.4 seconds
1024mb - 300mhz R5200SC - 14.5fps / 47.4 seconds
800x600
128mb - 180mhz R5000SC - 10.2 / 67.3 seconds
1024mb - 180mhz R5000SC - 10.3 / 67.2 seconds
1024mb - 300mhz R5200SC - 11.7 / 58.7 seconds
Quake 2 IRIX – 180mhz R5000SC vs 300mhz R5200SC
I got a 300mhz R5200SC CPU (the highest R5k series CPU for the O2) for my main Silicon Graphics O2. I ran before and after Quake 2 results out of curiosity if it would make a big difference having nearly 2X the mhz and that the CRIME graphics core is tightly integrated with the CPU.
Using the following commands on the console:
timedemo 1
map demo1.dm2
Here's the results:
320x240
180mhz - 14.9 / 46.3 seconds
300mhz - 18.8 / 36.7 seconds
640x480
180mhz - 12.4fps / 55.4 seconds
300mhz - 14.5fps / 47.4 seconds
800x600
180mhz - 10.3 / 67.2 seconds
300mhz - 11.7 / 58.7 seconds
Kind of surprised at the results, I'll be testing my 180mhz R5000PC vs 180mhz R5000SC shortly to see what if any difference the Level 2 cache makes.
SGI O2 – Maxed out Memory
Found a guy on Craigslist who was selling his O2, didn't know the specs other than it was not a R10k or R12k model, but offered it for $50. The going rate on eBay for O2 parts is generally higher than that, so I took a gamble. Surprisingly, the O2 was the lowest end CPU, but had 8 128mb sticks of memory, the max you can pop in an O2. One pair of these go for over a hundred bucks on eBay. I migrated all of my memory out of my O2 and swapped it in, voila 1GB for $50 and now I've got an "extra" O2 that I'll probably use to record guitar riffs.
Silicon Graphics O2 showing the 1GB of RAM
I tried Quake II, it boots up a little bit quicker, but FPS wise, I didn't notice a difference.
Quake II on IRIX
I figured after attempting to compile SDLQuake and running into x86 assembly, UDP and linking issues I decided to try the "official" IRIX port from SGI. Oddly enough, Quake II runs at 640x480x16 with full textures on my Silicon Graphics O2. Feeling adventurous, I wanted to see if it would play with the x86 Windows 3.20 version. Sure enough, I was able to play with an IRIX hosted game (it would probably work the other way as well) with my Windows 7 workstation.
Quake II on my O2
On a side note, I got SDLQuake to get all the way to the linking stage before giving up on it. For whatever reason using -lSDL was not including what looks like X11 or OpenAL libraries. I included both of those libraries and was still getting the errors.
Silicon Graphics O2 has arrived!
Well actually it did on Tuesday, but just finally got it in working state last night with SSH, BASH and SAMBA. I had a spare Maxtor Atlas II 15k 73gb Ultra 320 SCA drive that I replaced the existing Quantum 10k 9gb, it's now both quiet and pretty fast considering it's one cpu away from being the lowest end O2 and it's 14-15 years old.
Silicon Graphics O2
Silicon Graphics O2 Startup Menu
Next on the todo list is get GCC setup along with NEDIT so I can start programming on it.